Exclusive: For Maharashtra, minority school-college rules may change soon

The panel was constituted after the controversy earlier this year over the grant of minority status certificates to educational institutions. Its recommendations have since prompted the state government to set up another committee to draft a revised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which officials said is likely to be finalised by the end of this month.

The proposed changes would alter the approval process at multiple stages. Instead of applications being processed entirely within the Minority Affairs Department, the committee has recommended that the process be supervised by a senior IAS officer, preferably the department secretary, and that applications be scrutinised by an expert committee comprising representatives from multiple government departments.

Proposal to monitor existing institutions

The panel has also proposed introducing oversight after minority status is granted. At present, there is no mechanism to monitor institutions once they receive the status. The committee has recommended periodic supervision to assess whether institutions continue to satisfy the conditions under which minority status was granted. It has further proposed that the government periodically review whether concessions and benefits available to minority institutions are being availed in accordance with the law and are reaching their intended beneficiaries.

The report was submitted to Chief Secretary Rajesh Aggarwal about a month ago. On July 15, the government constituted an implementation committee headed by Minority Affairs Secretary Madhavi Khode Chaware to prepare a framework for the recommendations and draft the revised SOP.

Who will be on the SOP implementation panel?

The implementation committee comprises representatives from the Finance, General Administration, School Education, Higher and Technical Education, and Minority Affairs departments. It has already held two meetings and is in the final stages of preparing the revised SOP, officials said.

“The committee is in the final stage of issuing new Standard Operating Procedure. The new SOP for granting Minority status is likely to be announced by the end of August,” a senior official familiar with the process told The Indian Express.

When contacted, Reddy declined to comment, saying he had submitted the report to the government. Khode Chaware confirmed that the report had been received and that work on implementing its recommendations was underway.

The Reddy committee was constituted after a controversy erupted in February this year over the grant of minority status certificates to educational trusts running schools and colleges. Questions were raised after certificates for 19 of the 20 trusts were uploaded between January 29 and February 4, with a separate bulk upload attributed to technical issues on the MahaIT portal taking place between January 28 and 30, prompting allegations of irregularities. Following the controversy, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered that the approvals be kept in abeyance pending a review, while Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar directed a detailed inquiry into the approval process.

The Minority Development Department, however, maintained that the approvals were not irregular. As first reported by The Indian Express, it told the Chief Secretary that most of the certificates that appeared to have been issued between January 28 and January 30 were uploaded only after technical issues with the MahaIT portal were resolved, and that hearings and approvals for 19 of the 20 trusts had already been completed between December 24, 2025, and January 27, 2026, when Ajit Pawar was still in office.